The Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Joint Experimentation was established to examine the joint experimentation programs and activities at the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and to recommend ways to enhance the contributions of joint experimentation to transformation. The Task Force assessed the goals, process, and substance of JFCOM's experimentation program. The Task Force also provided an external review of the Millennium Challenge 02 (MC02) experiment.
The Task Force was charged to examine the use of red teams in the Department of Defense and recommend ways that such teams could be of greater value to the department. Our Terms of Reference and task force membership are provided in Appendices 1 and 2.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Defense Policy
For a brief period in the early 1990's the U.S. Department of Defense pursued an R policy that was explicitly “dual-use,” funding projects aimed at simultaneously developing both military and civilian applications of the same underlying technologies. The policy emerged from more than a decade of bipartisan agitation in Congress and segments of the military-industrial establishment, spurred by a shared belief that more advanced technologies now “spun on” from civilian to military applications than “spun off” in the other direction (US Department of Defense, Office of the Undersecretary for Acquisition, 1987; Gansler, 1989; Alic et al., 1992; Stowsky 1992, 1999). With the end of the Cold War and mushrooming budget deficits constraining defense spending, Pentagon planners saw dual-use development as a strategy for improving efficiency and lowering costs as well as enhancing quality by enabling the construction of sophisticated weapons systems off a more integrated civil-military technology base (US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; US Department of Defense, 1995).
Topic:
Defense Policy, Economics, and Science and Technology
The following is a compilation of speeches, official documents, and policy notes by U.S. government officials on small arms from 1995-2003. This summary is intended to be a survey of the evolution of U.S. governmental policy, in order to give a broad history, as well as insight, into the U.S. position on the small arms issue in future international fora.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) develops the Strategic Master Plan (SMP) as the capstone document of the command's Integrated Planning Process (IPP). The SMP presents the AFSPC Vision, outlines a strategy to implement that Vision, and defines a 25-year plan. That plan is integrated across the AFSPC mission areas to provide the space capabilities required to achieve the Vision.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Economics, and Science and Technology
In political Washington, one can get the impression that everything is “spin”, that there are no real truths. In the news media different views are aired and debated, but one view is said to be no better than another, and certainly political views cannot be proven the way we learn mathematical proofs in school.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Science and Technology
The American Physical Society's July 16 study on boost-phase intercept missile defense programs provides an exhaustive and objective analysis of the science and technology behind the programs. However, it lacks one key element: the cost of boost-phase intercept.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Science and Technology
What kind of question is: “What if Sun Tzu and John Boyd did a National Defense Review?” Sun Tzu, if he existed at all, has been gone some 2,500 years. The late Col. John R. Boyd, U.S.A.F., while intimately involved in fighter aircraft design during his active duty years, wrote practically nothing on hardware or force structure after he retired, when he created the strategic concepts for which he is best known today.
In 2001, prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, the Center for Defense Information published a national security review and force structure entitled Reforging the Sword: Forces for a 21st Century Security Strategy. Happily for the authors of Reforging, the Sept. 11 attacks did not make it obsolete. To the contrary, its emphases on working more closely with allies, on lighter, more agile forces, on intelligence, and on the importance of nonmilitary components of a conflict were important elements of the conduct of the counterattack by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. The events of Sept. 11 and Operation Enduring Freedom have reinforced the need raised in Reforging to prepare for new threats, and have enhanced the prospects for some of its proposed new directions, particularly in the area of allied collaboration if a multilateralist administration took office. This report updates Reforging the Sword in light of events on and since Sept. 11, 2001. The suggestions here use as a foundation the predilections spelled out in Reforging for working with allies, for taking the nonmilitary elements of modern war into consideration, and for trying to keep humans in the war-fighting loop.
This issue of the defense monitor provides basic information about U.S. and foreign military forces, including facts on size, equipment, and cost. It is intended as a snapshot reference guide — more data is available on the CDI website at www.cdi.org/ news/vital-statistics/ and on the government Internet sources listed at the back of the issue.